"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances to wait upon him, to do little services ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... fraught That upon my pulses wrought: I too felt the air of June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside my truant son. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... mornings of the week he wanted to play truant from the office, to be off with Ruth over the hills and far away. Both mornings there came to him a picture of Gertie, wanting to slip out and play like Ruth, but having no chance. He felt guilty because ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... window when they got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... spoke, the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick's arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, 'Let me go; I will go ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... both white and black labor alike, in many sections of the state. (Bibliography: Rev. John R. Cox (colored) Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Born 1852 (does not know day and month), Minister A.M.E. Church. First truant officer Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Interviewed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the weeds were so clearly unbecoming. Habit, meanwhile, and that still-existing old aunt, who seemed resolved to live to a hundred, kept her as before at Burleigh: and, seeing that a few months after the captain's departure she had presented the world, not to say her truant lord, with twins, she had always found something to do in the way of, what she considered, education, and other juvenile amusement: that is to say, when the gayeties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time to spare in such a process. The twins—a brace of boys—were ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... The truant hour came back at dawn to-day, Across the hemispheres, And bade my sleeping soul retrace its ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... flame of color lifted in her pale cheek. She looked at the dusty road, her hand pressed to her bosom as if to make certain that the truant heart had come back to her like a dove to its cote out of the storm. She looked up presently, and smiled a bit; looked down again, the hot blood writing a confession ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced a truant lock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... uncongenial toil, only to devote ourselves to that which is congenial. It is only to transact some higher business that even Apollo dare play the truant from Admetus. We must all work for the sake of work; we must all work, as Thoreau says again, in any 'absorbing pursuit—it does not much matter what, so it be honest'; but the most profitable work is that which combines into one continued effort the largest proportion ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seem an odd means of gaining the affection of a truant husband, but it is said to have had this effect upon Henry, his wronged wife from that moment gaining a place in his heart, into which she had fairly cudgelled herself. The man was really of susceptible ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... was now greatly wrapped up in Miss Katharine. You would think the change was agreeable to Mr. Henry; no such matter! To the contrary, every circumstance of alteration was a stab to him; he read in each the avowal of her truant fancies. That constancy to the Master of which she was proud while she supposed him dead, she had to blush for now she knew he was alive, and these blushes were the hated spring of her new conduct. I am to conceal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide[12] a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac,[13] and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... truant blood rushed back to Alric's cheeks. He attempted to say no, and to shake his head, but the tongue was still rebellious, and the head would not move—at least not in that way—so the poor boy glanced slightly aside, as if meditating flight. The Dane, without altering his position, just moved his ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... of these chalky hogs'-backs, was not depressing; and there is no doubt that her dream at starting was to win the heart of her mother-in-law, tell her whole history to that lady, enlist her on her side, and so gain back the truant. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... robins nest again," and that suffices Cio-Cio-San. But when Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, brings Yamadori to her. Yamadori is a wealthy Japanese ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for others, riper for the string: From these dire scenes my wretched lines ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... "Ah, truant!" cried the fair maiden, as she caressed her little favourite, "how could you wander from me—how could you ever fancy yourself safe apart from Duty? I saw the hawk wheeling in the air, and I trembled for my beautiful pet; but he has found here a refuge and protector. Nelly, I thank you for your ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and that she ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fain have joined the truant set, and, at the first commotion, up went his great back, and down went his ears, with a single lash out behind that meant mischief, but Mr. Sponge was on the alert, and just gave him such a dig with his spurs as restored order, without exposing anything that anybody ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a sailing-ship ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... was playing truant round the steps did Ben a service without knowing it, for a sudden puff blew a torn leaf to his feet, and seeing a picture he took it up. It evidently had fallen from some ill-used history, for the picture showed some queer ships at anchor, some oddly dressed men just landing, and a ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... gentleman? And was it for this that you took fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to your nurse because she shook the rod ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... boys started off for school But loitered by the way, Until at last 'twas quite too late To go to school that day. Ah naughty, naughty, truant boys! But listen what befell! Close by a wicked ogress lived, Down ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle
... who were now seated on the ottoman, engaged more in their own reflections, than in conversation, when Lieutenant Elmsley entered the room, announcing that the truant would shortly be in for breakfast, which, he requested, might be instantly prepared in the usual manner, only adding thereto a couple ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... to feel very indignant if not treated by deans and tutors, as a man and as a gentleman; but has he any right to expect to be so treated, if he condescends to adopt the practices of a mischievous or a truant school boy? ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... morn—at noon—at twilight dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had it entered so persistently into her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart. Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts, so strong and splendid that we submit without question.... All, all her dreams had vanished, the latest ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... machine. Here, too, was a miniature fair, the path being lined by itinerant temptations. There was brisk traffic in toffy, and gray peas and monkey-nuts, and the crowd was swollen by anxious parents seeing tiny or truant offspring safe within the school-gates. The women were bare-headed or be-shawled, with infants at their breasts and little ones toddling at their sides, the men were greasy, and musty, and squalid. Here a bright earnest little ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... truant," said Wilfred, self-consciously; his schoolmaster had often proved an alibi against him. "Then ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... several voices mingled in the shrubbery adjoining the garden. Maude was conversing in animated tones with Fanny Trevelyan. Geoffrey Seymour had played truant to his lady love by ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Not only is the angler, like the poet, born and not made, as Walton says, but there is a deal of the poet in him, and he is to be judged no more harshly; he is the victim of his genius: those wild streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... minutes after when the truant Cicely re-entered the little keeping-room, her cheeks and eyes ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of Croatia. On that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of Agram shouting "Down with Cuvaj" (the Ban or Governor of Croatia), and cheering the police when they tried ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... how oft soe'er the task Of truant verse hath lightened graver care, From Muse or Sylvan was he wont to ask, In phrase poetic, inspiration fair; Careless he gave his numbers to the air, They came unsought for, if applauses came: Nor for himself prefers he now the prayer; Let but his verse befit a hero's fame, Immortal be the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... commonly called little things, to which you, do not attend, your handwriting is one, which is indeed shamefully bad and illiberal; it is neither the hand of a man of business, nor of a gentleman, but of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal hand, and quick; not the hand of a procureur ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 'Come its ways, then, and get its patten.' Until that reconciling word was uttered, there had been a shadow of distrust on the baby's face, as if treachery might be in the wind. But the magic of that one word patten wrought an instant revolution. Back the little truant ran, and the young mother's manner made it evident that she would not on her part forget what had passed between the high contracting parties.[51] What, then, could be the meaning of this talismanic word patten? Accidentally, having had a naval brother ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other with a reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical smile. "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... professional in the Isle of Man. In due course we all went to the little village school; but I fear, from all that I can remember, and from what I have been told, that knowledge had little attraction for me in those days, and I know that I very often played truant, sometimes for three weeks at a stretch. Consequently my old schoolmaster, Mr. Boomer, had no particular reason to be proud of me at that time, as he seems to have become since. He never enjoys a holiday so much in these days as when he comes over from Jersey to see me play ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... of the invisible world there is one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... longing. He was sure of a sympathetic listener in Malcolm, who listened with approval to the tales of the various scrapes into which he had got since his last visit; of how, instead of going to school, he had played truant and with another boy his own age had embarked in a fisherman's boat and gone down the river and had not been able to get back until next day; how he had played tricks upon his dominie, and had conquered in single combat the son ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen to him ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... before Alfred Barton made his appearance. No truant school-boy ever dreaded the master's eye as he dreaded to appear before his father that Sunday morning. His sleep had been broken and restless; the teeth of Sandy Flash had again grinned at him in nightmare-dreams, and when he came to put on his clothes, the sense ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... description of this individual may furnish some idea of the personal appearance of a whole race, it may be well to detain the narrative, in order to present it to the reader, in our hasty and imperfect manner. Would the truant eyes of Alston or Greenough turn, but for a time, from their gaze at the models of antiquity, to contemplate this wronged and humbled people, little would be left for such inferior artists as ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... up. The two culprits sat up very straight and made a frantic show of figuring on their slates. For Jessie had reported no letter that morning, and who knew what might happen? The teacher arose frowning, and Rosie made a desperate dive towards the truant books, but Miss Hillary stopped her. Then, to the amazement and relief of the two tremblers, she began to rebuke, not Rosie, but Joel Davis! Joel was a big, sleepy, fat boy who sat opposite the two little girls, and the books had bounced over ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... entered at night, while the sentinel was on guard, and the rifled chest was found hidden under a tomb in the adjacent burial ground. Three persons, and the sentinel, were tried for the offence; but on the second day, the crown prosecutor was not in his place. This truant lawyer was enjoying a breakfast, while the court and prisoners were watching the door of entrance. The patience of the judge gave way, and he directed a verdict of "not guilty" to be entered. The crown relieved the treasurer from ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... my tenement residence I was sitting in a restaurant of the quarter, having played truant from Mrs. Wood's, whose Friday fish dinner had poisoned me. My hands had been inflamed and irritated in consequence, and I was now intent upon a good clean supper earned by ten hours' work. My back was turned to the door, which I knew must be open, as ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... intellect, added to a uniform and sedentary life, affected the system of her nerves, and contributed to debilitate her frame. She was prohibited by her physician, not merely from committing her thoughts to paper, but, had it been possible, from thinking at all. No truant, escaped from school, could receive more pleasure in eluding a severe master, than did Mrs. Robinson, when, the vigilance of her physician relaxing, she could once more resume her books ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... of Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence, that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the night. A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale, dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in arm they ventured ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... London, as yokels have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of, unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he had the chance. It was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the latter's lips as the truant returned to his post. A tender gracious smile was the only sign of ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... homeward hied, When near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood: The hound was smeared with drops of gore; His ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life's book is hard to understand: Why couldst ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... them regarding "th' latest from th' Hills." Waffles made a rush for Hopalong, but fell over Big-foot's feet and all three were piled up in a heap. All were beaming with good nature, for they were as so many school boys playing truant. Prosaic cow-punching was relegated to the rear and they looked eagerly forward to their several missions. Frenchy told of the barb-wire fence war and of the new regulations of "Smith of Buffalo" regarding cow-punchers' guns, and from the caustic remarks ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... Though on a Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed, Still hungering penniless and far from home, I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws, Or blushing crabs, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... the doctor's surgery and consulting-room had had a strange fascination for him, and whenever he was missing, the maid-of-all-work, who rarely showed her face out of the dim kitchen, knew that the boy would not be playing truant from his work or playing with other lads of his age, but would be found reading, dusting, or amusing himself in the surgery, smelling bottles, opening drawers, or standing on a chair, gazing at the ghastly preparations in one or other of the row ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... and the moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base, the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette, on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have described, to visions, startling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... duty of the principal to reduce the enrolment per schoolhouse to the lowest point. Therefore, when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind our local municipal administration lies our whole system of capitalistic production, calling for cheap hands and profit, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... artificer, craftsman, handicraftsman, journeyman, mechanic, workman, laborer, operative, industrial. Antonyms: idler, drone, dabbler, sluggard, truant, dilettante, loafer, shirker. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... but one member of the household he did not exclusively claim. This was the married daughter, Salina, whose life had been embittered by a truant husband,—no other, in fact, than the erring son of the worthy Mrs. Sprowl. The day when the infatuated girl made a marriage so much beneath the family dignity, Toby, in great grief and indignation, gave her up. "I washes my hands ob her! she ain't no more a chile ob mine!" said the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... she should have had it put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to unconsciousness of the ambush ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... forward by the scruff of the neck. Others were still in hiding. The men searched among the mounds and bushes. Every now and then the crack of a whip and the yelp of a dog announced the finding of a truant. Two trackers on large snowshoes had already gone ahead to break the trail. It was easy to follow their tracks though the woods were still in darkness and remained so for several hours. At dawn Oo-koo-hoo and our little ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... had been at the marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... exclaimed the truant husband and brother, with a sigh that seemed to relieve a very loaded breast. "Yes, there's comfort in that! If there's a fire, there must be them that lighted it; and a fire at this season, too, says that ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... nowadays was that her son would acquire a West country burr, and it was considered more prudent, economically and otherwise, to let him go on learning with his grandfather and herself. Mark missed Cass when he went to school in Rosemarket, because there was no such thing as playing truant there, and it was so far away that Cass did not come home for the midday meal. But in summertime, Mark used to wait for him outside the town, where a lane branched from the main road into the unfrequented ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... she clasped her truant boy, She thanked the stranger with her eyes; The hermit gazed in doubt and joy And ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the same state of mind. They also went along with Lieutenant Lawton. It was arranged that Miss Jenny Ann and Jeff should wait for the truant. They would then bring Madge and Tom to the hotel at Portsmouth where ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... overtaking the lamb and upsetting it with a poke of his nose. The lamb, not at all disconcerted by the tumble, which was only a variation of its method of progress, came over on its knees and rose at once to go ahead; but the delay had been sufficient. Steve caught up; and the next instant, the truant, feeling the ground removed from under it, hung helpless across the hand of ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... the theory that, playing truant from the house while his father was engaged in work below stairs, he had been overwhelmed and perhaps wholly consumed by a detached fragment from the fiery visitant. This picturesque suggestion found many supporters until, on the afternoon of December fourteenth, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home, where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he noticed what appeared to ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Square, because she clung tenaciously to such scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite fresh, and had a significance they did not have when they were first told ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... like a couple of schoolboys playing truant, and then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child who was dressed in anything ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... with tears of rapture He bathed my hand; knelt; sighed; as had his voice By pleasure been o'erwhelmed, a while was silent; But soon came words, sweet as those most sweet kisses Which grateful Venus gave the swain whose care Brought back her truant doves!——So sweet, so sweet—— Distrust, herself, must have believed those words. Oh! and was ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... by his blunt, indifferent reply, but before she could frame another question, Miss Murch appeared from an inner office, at the same moment that Miss Keith stepped through the doorway from behind them in search of her truant patient; and Peace suffered herself to be led docilely away. So absorbed was she in her new discovery that even her pleasure in her ability to walk again ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Such kindness is not to be forgotten during life."—"The Inkyo[u] an hotoke; Iemon Dono and O'Hana are the husband and wife not present?" The question came from some one in the room. "O'Hana San is very ill. Her state is serious. Iemon does not leave her." Akiyama answered for the truant pair. Kibei's joy ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... The truant officer never found his way to Paolo's tenement to discover that he could neither read nor write, and, what was more, would probably never learn. It would have been of little use, for the public schools thereabouts were crowded, and Paolo could not have got into one of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... nuisance, but he is neither so numerous nor so objectionable as yet as his fellow in Melbourne and Sydney. Unlike the street-arab, he is either a school-boy, or earns his living somehow, or he is a truant from work of either kind. He probably belongs to some working family, whom he favours with his company only at such times as pleases himself, for he is utterly unmanageable by his parents. He has exuberant spirits and an inordinate love of mischief, which shows itself in manifold ways. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... first necessary expenses. He worked in gardens and as a janitor for some time. During his course he taught six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant superintendent in the Essex County Truant School, at Lawrence, Mass., pushed a rolling chair at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, was porter one season at Oak Hill House, Littleton, N. H., and canvassed for a publishing house one summer in Maine. None of his fellow-students did ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant. The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too. The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its confines as his own family generation had broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever the mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... [Nullibiety.1] Absence.— N. absence; inexistence &c. 2[obs3]; nonresidence, absenteeism; nonattendance, alibi. emptiness &c. adj.; void, vacuum; vacuity, vacancy; tabula rasa[Lat]; exemption; hiatus &c. (interval) 198; lipotype|!. truant, absentee. nobody; nobody present, nobody on earth; not a soul; ame qui vive[Fr]. V. be absent &c. adj.; keep away, keep out of the way; play truant, absent oneself, stay away; keep aloof, hold aloof. withdraw, make oneself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was a public house—"The Blue Anchor;" and here, of course, was a goodly knot of men, some inside drinking, some outside smoking, and all making a most disreputable noise. There were also one or two women in amongst the crowd, evidently searching for truant sons or husbands, and Harry feared their inquisitive eyes even more than he feared the men. For he remembered he was covered with dust and dirt from his scramble; his hair all rough; hatless, and generally untidy. Besides, what business had a boy of his age and station in life to be wandering ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... the first waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory manner, whereas an intelligent investigation of home conditions and an effort to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Beth immediately jumped out of bed, and rushed out upon the upper piazza. In the yard below, looking as conscious as a truant child, ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... in the court or the cloister; were the idol of the maids of honour, or the model of the monks of La Trappe; to remind you that you had forgotten every body on the other side of the Channel who was worth remembering, including herself; and commending me, as a truant and a trifler, to your especial, grave, and experienced protection. Apropos! She sent me a letter, to be delivered to you with my own hands. But for yourself it had nearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... unable to secure a taxi, tramped along Oxford Street towards his hotel. He had just reached the Circus when the malignant wind, hiding in ambush down Regent Street, rushed at him unawares and sent his hat roistering into the doorway of a store. With a frown, Selwyn stopped and stared at the truant. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... railway station the truant emerged suddenly, just as the train was leaving; but Lord Uxmoor had secured three seats, and the defaulter had to go with Harrington. On reaching the hotel, the ladies took their bed-candles; but Uxmoor found time to propose an excursion ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the first has been all his life one of that easy, wayward, truant class whom the world is accustomed to designate as nobody's enemies but their own. Bred to a profession for which he never qualified himself, and reared in the expectation of a fortune he has never inherited, he has undergone ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... somewhat that my father was an honest man, and somewhat you may have seen of myself, though not to make any true judgement by, because I have hitherto had only potestatem verborum, nor that neither. I was three of my young years bred with an ambassador in France, and since I have been an old truant in the school-house of your council-chamber, though on the second form, yet longer than any that now sitteth hath been upon the head form. If your Majesty find any aptness in me, or if you find any scarcity in others, whereby you may think it fit for your service ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the boys sat at his iron-barred window, wide awake. He was a Truant, and had never yet been in any place from which he could not run away. He felt that his school-fellows depended upon him to run away and bring them assistance, and he knew that his reputation as a Truant was at stake. His responsibility ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... sensation, after seeing Mademoiselle Reine Gobillot's fresh, chubby face, her figure prim beyond measure in a lilac-and-green plaid gingham dress, and carrying a basket on her arm, a necessary burden to maidens of a certain class who play truant. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... something, for he retained, to old age, the memory of some of the scenes through which he used to pass on his way to and from this school. For want of the necessary preliminary training, he could do little or nothing with letters: he rather preferred playing truant and roaming the meadows in listless idleness, wherever his fancy led him. This could not last. His father soon set him to work in the foundry; and with this advantage, that the lad stood on better terms with himself than he had been for a considerable period, for he discovered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... been a great master of realistic painting. Nor are the accessories less effective. A wide-roofed kitchen chimney, a page-boy leaving the room by a flight of steps, which leads to the house door, and the table at which the truant monks are seated, complete a picture of homely Italian life. It may still be matched out of many an ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... every other emotion to lively apprehensions for her safety, but he soon saw her run back, and, on observing him coming to meet her, assume an untroubled countenance. "Has this serene night," said she, "made you too a truant with your pillow? I have, of late, been little disposed to sleep, and enjoy a moon-light walk amazingly."—"Do not those dogs annoy you," inquired Sedley, with more of moody displeasure than tenderness; "I should think they would form but a harsh response ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... was not ordered abroad as yet; and Captain Dobbin had not seen George. "He was with his sister, most likely," the Captain said. "Should he go and fetch the truant?" So she gave him her hand kindly and gratefully: and he crossed the square; and she waited and waited, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she said. "We're thirsty...." She came back into the room. "The postman's just come," she said with a nod and a smile to Esther. "Lydia will bring our letters up if there are any." She turned again to Micky. "Well, truant! And what have you been ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... to find vent in a peal of laughter. Even the usually imperturbable countenance of the mirza lightens up a little, as though infected by the khan's overflowing merriment and the mudbake's rough handling of the young goat. They know each other thoroughly—as thoroughly as orchard-looting, truant-playing, teacher-deceiving school-boys—these three hopeful aspirants to the favor of Allah; they are an amusing trio, and not a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... aid, His sullen head would slip from off my knee, And his damp hair to earth would wander down, Till I grew frighten'd thus to challenge Death, And with the king of terrors idly play.— Yet those pale lips deserted not the smile Of froward, gay defiance, lingering there, Like a tir'd truant's sleeping on the grass, Mid the stray sun-beams of unsadden'd hope, Dreaming of ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... boy who worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played around railroad ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... chattering, first of one thing and then of another. They complain that by thus nibbling at every blade of grass on the way-side we shall never get to the end of our journey; and there is some truth in what they say. Still, I will whisper to you in excuse that I thought we might play truant a little bit while we were on familiar ground, where naturally you were sure to feel a particular interest in everything. The hand, the tongue, the teeth—these are all old friends of yours—and I thought ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... I remember with nothing but pleasure. I must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember, punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... carefully at the facts of thy last long letter, and they are just such as might have befallen any little truant of the High School, who had got down to Leith Sands, gone beyond the PRAWN-DUB, wet his hose and shoon, and, finally, had been carried home, in compassion, by some high-kilted fishwife, cursing all the while the trouble which the brat ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... more had befallen, but as ill-luck would have it, my old Evesham keepsake," touching his side, "burst forth again one evening, and left me so spent, that Bessee sent the boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will be no great interruption, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom 10 A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom (That all bestowing, this withholding all) Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call, Return, poor Child! Home, weary Truant, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Sit hand in hand, as we were wont to sit, Over some book of ancient chivalry Stealing a truant holiday from school, Follow the huntsmen through the autumn woods, And watch the falcons burst their tasselled jesses, When the hare breaks ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... (Ah joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... ambling along, Came dainty Zephyrus humming a song, And pausing—the truant—to kiss each flower That blushed in garden, or field, or bower. But no one was left to be merry with him, So he danced with the leaves till the light grew dim, And, as Twilight was going to sleep in the west, He, too, fell ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... mistress, and Antonia maid, Appeared like two poor harmless women, who Of goblins, but still more of men afraid, Had thought one man might be deterred by two, And therefore side by side were gently laid, Until the hours of absence should run through, And truant husband should return, and say, "My dear,—I was the first who ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... threatened him, he would drop books, lunch, slate and all, and spitting on his hands and rolling up his sleeves, would bound away after it, yelling like a wild Indian. And some days, so fascinating was the chase, Jim did not appear at the schoolhouse at all; and of course Madge and Stumps played truant too. Sometimes a week together would pass and the Keene children would not be seen at the schoolhouse. Visits from the schoolmaster produced no lasting effect. The children would come for a day or two, then be seen no ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various |
